London-based transit app Citymapper is today launching Smart Ride, a hybrid bus and taxi service that will take riders around a fixed network in the capital.
The company is operating the service under a private hire licence from Transport for London, following a pair of trial “smart bus” routes in the capital. The new licence limits the firm to operating vehicles that can carry eight or fewer people, but frees it to run future routes that can change dynamically as demand shifts, rather than being legally mandated to stick to specific timetables and stopping patterns.
“We believe in the future of shared transportation in cities, there is no way we’re going to solve for congestion and pollution otherwise,” Omid Ashtari, Citymapper’s president and head of business, told the Guardian. “But the regulations we see are not stacked in the favour of the bus industry to make sure that works.

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Unionized (insert your favourite municipal bus firm in here like TransLink) bus drivers that make more than your average cabbie, with shorter and more regular hours, and lower layoff risk, won’t like this idea.
But it gives a good idea where the industry is going in the 21st century !